GLOSSARY

A BK Dictionary.

Sometimes when I write, I use words or phrases that are hard to understand. Especially if English isn’t your first language. Whether its slang, game jargon, memes or even Japanese, I oftentimes find myself saying things that only me or a close friend of mine would understand.

This page will serve as a glossary of words that I may use in my guides and forget to define. Think of it as a BK Dictionary. If I ever use a word that isn’t exactly easy to understand, I will reference its definition on this page.

This page may also contain definitions for common words or phrases used on the internet in gaming circles.

When you attack a boss/enemy, you gain the attention of the boss. If you are dealing high damage or if you are the first one spotted in a team of players, the boss is most likely to target you and may even ignore your teammates completely. The act of gaining attention on yourself is called drawing aggro. When you have the aggro, you are the target the boss wants to kill.

When you try to trick the opposition into doing something you want them to do so you can take advantage. For example, if you know that a boss has has a certain long range attack that leaves them very open to damage, you can stand far away to try to bait them into doing it so you can capitalize.

This refers to the act of ending the recovery of an attack early by canceling the attack into another attack, guard or a jump.

If I’m using a huge sword and I drop it to the ground with an overhead attack. I would be able to cancel into a jump, guard or another attack without having to pick the sword up first and swing it again.

This refers to the act of helping players who do not pull their own weight. Either they are Free, under-leveled or are against putting in effort to level themselves. Carried players don’t properly learn how to play the game and think they are good at the game simply because their character is strong. Carried players also almost never thank the players who carried them or won’t acknowledged that they were carried.

I also call this solo-but-in-a-team play.

I must have carried enough players in Lost Song to fill a small island (Not exaggerating). After I dropped that game, I vowed to never carry anyone ever again no matter what. Its something I loathe and I find extremely disrespectful to players who are putting in a conscious effort to better themselves.

In a particular match-up, if the weapon/character you are most familiar with doesn’t perform well in the match-up. Opting to pick a different weapon/character that performs considerably better just for the sake of the match-up is called a Counter Pick.

This word is used to refer to a specific sequence or action that is not easy to perform. For example, Final Vengeance in God Eater has High Execution because its not an easy skill to use. Izanami in BlazBlue has high execution combos.

This word may also loosely refer to the individual player’s skill level which allows them to pull of things that are not easy to do.

A Frame is a unit of time measurement in gaming. In a game that runs at 60 Frames per Second (FPS), 1 Frame is 1/60 of a second. In other words, its a fraction of a second.

Usually when talking about Frames it refers to an incredibly small window in which to do something. A 1 Frame Link is the act of inputting a sequence within 1/60th of a second which is incredibly difficult to do. 1 Frame links are also refereed to as ‘Just Frames’.

Fighting Game terminology. Consider a situation where you are being pressured on your wakeup. Your opponent can attack you both High and Low to mixup and break your guard on wakeup. But if you think carefully, the Low attack will come out faster than the High attack because High attacks are traditionally slower (in 2D Fighting Games games)

Now, with this knowledge you may opt to block both attacks by blocking Low first, then switching to a High block at the point where the projected High attack may hit you.

Fuzzy Guarding refers to a situation where you are unsure what kind of attack you need to guard against and you are attempting to block against it anyway. Whether it actually comes out is a different story.

This loosely refers to the 6th sense a player may acquire after playing a countless number of games. Its sort of an intuitive prediction ability gotten from playing and understanding how games are designed and work in practice.

Have you ever played a game where there’s a part where you have to diffuse a number of bombs within a timer? Has it ever happened where after you diffuse the 4th or 5th bomb you say to yourself “There’s probably only one more” and then sure enough, there’s only one more.

Going HAM (Hard as A Motherfucker). This basically means that a boss or player is going really crazy and hitting really hard. Its essentially means that things are going especially well for the one who is going HAM. It also means that the ones who are on the receiving end of the one going HAM are getting bodied fiercely.

Fighting Game slang. In tag games, this refers to a situation where you messed up and both/all your characters got caught on screen in a combo and may die. Its truly a heart rending situation for one player, but a wonderfully great present to the other.

I may use this term in an instance where you can potentially mess up badly and lose everything at the drop of a hat.

Fighting Game terminology. When you take damage, your character flinches in pain and is unable to do anything before they recover from that animation. This is called hitstun. It essentially allows the opposition to take advantage while the character is stuck taking damage.

Blockstun is the dame as hitstun, but it refers to when you are guarding against an attack and you have to first recover from the guard before you can do anything else.

I use this word very often and almost never mean it in the conventional sense. In Fighting Games, ‘hype’ refers to any single moment that encapsulates a high degree of excitement. The reason why its hype and not just ‘exciting’ is because there are usually many different things going on in the background that are necessary for that moment to be possible, but the players adapt to this seamlessly and still pull off great feats.

A perfect example is Kazunoko at GGXrd EVO 2017 Top 8. His opponent threw out a bomb that hits both players. The bomb was unsafe so he punished his opponent for doing it. But his punish was not going to go far since the bomb blast was imminent. But Kazunoko has the presence of mind and insane skills to adjust his punishing combo so that he could jump cancel and block the bomb and subsequently pick up the punish without missing a beat.

That’s hype. A moment of excellence that is so esoteric that players of that game won’t even begin to understand what’s so amazing about it.

I sometimes use ‘hype’ loosely to refer to anything that’s exciting or looks unconventionally interesting.

IDPTG is an Option Select that is used by scrubs as a seemingly viable reason as to why they lost, why they don’t do well at the game or when they want to humiliate someone who actually plays that game.

Its an ancient excuse used by gamers that allows them to disassociate themselves from doing well at the game for whatever reason because “I don’t play that game.”

This refers to a character or a weapon type that is incredibly good but its greatness isn’t publicly known. Usually means something that needs a bit of skill or a trick to use but when used effectively is surprisingly great even when compared to existing great standards.

A character/weapon type/magic spell or anything that is seemingly useless or requires a sizable amount of effort to be worth using. Being Low Tier generally means that there is a hell of a lot of things better than it, so much so that trying to learn to use it means you will struggle more than succeed.

This refers to the idea of dedicating yourself to a certain character/weapon type/playstyle as the Main thing that you play that game with. Generally refers to focusing on learning one thing very closely while ignoring the options for the time being.

A word I made up. Refers to a character/weapon type/playstyle or even a certain skill that is so effective and easy to use, there is a real danger of instantly Maining it and picking up bad gameplay habits as a result.

Most Main Traps are things that are super effective during story or on easy things, but start to not be as useful in endgame or in high difficulty situations.

This is the prospect of studying how A fights against B. You are to consider all the advantages, disadvantages each variable has and think up ways to either bend the match-up to your favor, or how to survive in an unfavorable match-up.

This word generally refers to how a game is played beyond the given rules of the game. Its the kind of strategy that players may use to play the game proficiently. Meta can even evolve to the point where its about a game within a game.

Meta is an interesting topic where a game that is fun on the surface, may not be as fun at a higher level or vice versa. Sometimes the Meta is just about spamming one move very effectively, or sometimes its about fifty other things going on in the background you may not even understand if you don’t play the game to that level.

Fighting Game terminology. This refers to the act of using varied attacks in other to break through your opponents guard. Attacking high when they are blocking low and attacking low when they are blocking high is the idea.

A 50-50 mixup refers to any situation where one of two things can happen. This doesn’t only apply to fighting games, but can apply to a boss’ attack patterns as well.

A Crossup is when you break an opponents guard by going behind them. Bosses may also do this in certain games.

Something that heavily appeals to new players and may even be the entire reason they purchased the game. But in reality its something that is kind of crappy or unnecessarily hard to use. Both cases lead to the beginner being unsatisfied.

Noob Traps are scary because you may never know you are caught in the noob trap.

In a balance update this refers to an existing character/weapon/skill having its abilities reduced and lowers by the developers. Sometimes a nerf is a response to things that were overpowered, but these days its generally a response to the playerbase complaining that something is overpowered.

Generally refers to something that tips the balance of the game in its favor. Something that’s overpowered is something that’s just so undeniably good it overshadows other things in the game. Sometimes OP is used as a synonym for Broken.

OP can also be used as a compliment to refer to a player who is good at the game.

Fighting Game terminology. This refers to the action of doing multiple inputs together and having different desirable results come out that depend on the situation.

For example, Guarding is R1+O in AccelSword. If I map a Counter Skill to R1+Triangle and then press R1+O+Triangle every time I guard, I will get a counter if the counter is not on cooldown and a block otherwise. This is an Option Select.

Its a very advanced technique that takes advantage of inputing multiple commands at the same time to cover multiple projected answers to a given situation.

Slang use: An Option Select (OS) can also be used to refer to a carefully worded excuse. The most common one is saying “I don’t play this game (idptg).” before or after a match. This way, you have an excuse for why you lost or you can make your opponent feel bad if you made them lose. Its a single phrase that single-handedly covers responses to multiple outcomes so its an IRL Option Select.

Power-leveling is the act of getting high level players to help you level up. Most of the time it ends up with you getting carried by strong players. This may result in you not learning core fundamentals needed to be good at the game because you’re letting the strong players kill everything.

Not exactly a respectable way of getting to level up, but many people who play online gaming are very anti-grind so to each their own.

This is what I call it when a boss gets angry and increases its abilities. Sometimes bosses have exclusive attacks in rage mode. Rage Mode generally needs a trigger (Like the boss losing HP) and generally has a set duration.

Fighting Game terminology. This refers to the concept of performing a continuous sequence of pre-determined attacks and setups to keep your opponent either in pressure or in a combo. Setplay can be a sequence of Reads, Punishes, Predictions and Okizeme that keeps the opponent on the ropes. Setplay generally exploits an opponent’s lack of match-up knowledge to keep them in a consecutive series of disadvantageous situations until they die.

Setplay usually means that you are in a position of control, gaining momentum with each action and your opponent has to find a way to break the momentum or else they will die.

Literally “Tied-Up Play”. This refers to the prospect of placing limits on yourself to make the game more difficult and enjoyable. Good examples of Shibari Play is to only use Rank 1 weapons, take no damage or to use no healing whatsoever.

Shibari comes in many forms but any time you refuse to do/use something in order to make the game more difficult for your personal enjoyment, its Shibari Play.

Startup time refers to the amount of time it takes for an attack to be in its actual attacking portion. Its how fast you can swing your arm before you hit something.

Recovery time refers to the point where after you have done an attack and now need to go back to the position where you can perform another action. Its the time you need to pull your arm back after throwing a punch.

Short for technique. This describes a particular strat or method in which a player would do something unconventional to achieve a desired result. High Level Tech or Advanced Tech is as it sounds: abstract methods used by high level players.

Refers to the input of Street Fighter Sagat’s special move of the same name. It means the act of doing an air/jump move, a fraction above the surface of the ground. Sometimes it evens looks like you’re doing a ground move due to how low above the ground it takes place. But it is without a doubt, an air move with all of the properties of an air move.

A character/weapon type/magic spell or anything that is especially great and requires a less-than-average amount of effort to be used effectively. Something being Top Tier generally means that there is a not a lot of things better than it, so much so that using it will see you succeed way more than struggle.

Top Tier things don’t always have to require low effort and top tier things are sometimes balanced out by making them hard to use.

Negative Fun. When something starts to be the opposite of fun. This means that its something that has the opposite effect of enjoyment on your life. Grinding or something that ruins the fun of the game can fall into this category.

A risky attack with a very long recovery time. Using these kinds of unsafe attacks recklessly will get you punished and killed. Unsafe attacks generally need to be used on a good read or in conjunction with a cancel of some kind.

This refers to when you are knocked down, and you have to get up afterwards. The reason why this is important in games is because when you knocked down, you are not able to attack or block and your very first action has to be getting back up before you can do anything. But while you have to get up, your opponent is free to do whatever they want and to keep you in pressure, they will attack you as you wakeup.

The literal term doesn’t make a lot of sense when translated to English, but yarikomi refers to Endgame. Its the action of finding things to do in the game even after the main story is over. This could be grinding for better gear, learning how to get better, playing online, doing side-missions or finishing up the trophies/achievements.

The beauty of yarikomi is that you give yourself personal tasks to perform in the game and clearing them gives you enjoyment.

A game with no yarikomi is a game with no endgame. Its a game where they’re practically nothing to do after you clear the main story and you’re likely to shelf it after a few more days.

Literally “The Absolute Territory”. Without talking about the origin of this word, zettai ryouiki refers to the section of skin visible between thigh-high socks/knee-socks and a skirt. Its an alluring region of flesh that is more visually stimulating than hot pants and ankle socks.

The allure of zettai ryouiki stems from the human eye’s natural ability to follow straight lines. This makes the region of skin visible between the straight horizontal lines of the kneesocks and the skirt appear more vividly. But the skirt is not an actual straight line, its an umbrella shaped curve that holds a treasure land all straight men would like to visit. This makes the appeal of zettai ryouiki incredibly strong and worth noting. Even in the dictionary of a website dedicated to gaming.

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